Illegal Drug Trade in Colombia - Influence Upon The Armed Conflict

Influence Upon The Armed Conflict

See also: Colombian Armed Conflict (1960s–present)

During the 1980s the Medellin Cartel led by Pablo Escobar was at its height and the U.S. and Colombian governments were moving towards enforcing laws regarding the illegal drug trade. The Medellin Cartel associated with 19th of April Movement (M-19) guerrilla among others to rely on them the production and processing of the illegal drugs. The guerrillas saw in the illegal drug trade a form of financing their guerrilla movement. Other guerrillas such as FARC and ELN followed the same example and also began collecting taxes on small illegal drug trafficking organizations to improve their financial stability.

With the fall of the two main drug trafficking cartels of Medellin and Cali in the 1990s, some of organizations that inherited their drug routes were members of the newly formed Norte del Valle Cartel. The FARC and ELN guerrillas came to control the coca-growing regions in the Colombian Amazon and to tax the income from the sale of coca-paste. The para-military groups initially grew out of the private armies of cocaine cartels.

They have however also been employed by the Colombian state to assassinate trade unionists, left-wing priests and any others deemed to be leftist sympathists. "The strengthening of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) during the 1990s was an unintended consequence of a series of tactical successes in U.S. antidrug policies. These included dismantling the Medellín and Cali drug cartels, interdicting coca coming into Colombian processing facilities, and using drug certification requirements to pressure the Colombian government to attack drug cartels and allow aerial fumigation of coca crops. These successes, however, merely pushed coca cultivation increasingly to FARC-dominated areas while weakening many of the FARC's political-military opponents. This provided the FARC with unprecedented opportunities to extract resources from the cocaine industry to deepen its long insurgency against the Colombian state."